FIRST DAY!

¡I’m here! To recap, quickly, b/c since I don’t have an electrical outlet converter yet my laptop is on its last dredges of battery. After flying to Dallas Tuesday afternoon, I then got on a 10 hour plane-ride for Santiago arrived at 7am on Wednesday. I soon met up with Jessie, my friend from kalamazoo and many other students participating in our program, called CIEE(Council for International and Educational Exchange). All in all there are 30 of us, only 5 of which are male. A surprising number are from California originally or go to school there, but the universities that sent students are as diverse as Georgetown, Claremeont Mckenna, Kalamazoo, Mount Holyoke, Hope College, and teensy Doane University of Nebraska.
The students seem very nice and the administrators of the program are wonderfrul. There are four people representing CIEE, three women and a man. They are incredibly organized, conscientious of our jetlagged-ness and treat us like adults, which is refreshing. We have already run through a lot of basic safety tips, emergency contacts and important Chilean slang, and I’m certain that our orientations will continue to be efficient and most importantly, relevant to our lives in Chile.
Tonight we have a welcome dinner-aka Cena de Bienvenido- and then on Friday the long-awaited host family reunion!!! They still won’t tell us anything about our families, so we are all waiting anxiously.
Until Friday we are staying in a pretty nice hotel with 3-4 people to a room. My roommates are really sweet, one is from Indiana and one is from Los Angeles!
That’s all for now, but espero escribir mas cuando tengo noticias interesantes!
(I hope to write more as soon as I have news of interest to report!)
Con carino,
Allie